The Heart of a Scoundrel (31 page)

Phoebe, however, had clearly minded. That damned hurt had glowed in her eyes so that he would have gladly removed his own right arm if it would have spared her from the pain bleeding through the fathomless blue irises. Before her, he would have said the worst thing was
caring
whether or not he’d hurt her. That no longer held true. Now, the worst thing was not knowing how to stop her from hurting.

Footsteps shuffled in the hall and he looked up expectantly. Disappointment settled like a stone in his belly. He’d welcomed the prospect of Phoebe returning, spitting mad and her finger wagging…than not at all. “Wallace,” he greeted his stubbornly loyal butler with wooden tones.

“My lord,” the older man said and inclined his head. “I have taken the liberty of having one of the maids show Her Ladyship to her chambers.”

He stared blankly at Wallace. The man tilted his head forward and gave him a direct look. His butler expected something of him where Phoebe was concerned. Short of reversing time, there was little he could do regarding his mention of previous lovers. On his and Phoebe’s wedding day. Wallace wagged his bushy brows. Edmund shook his head.

A rheumy smile twinkled the older servant’s eyes. “Perhaps Her Ladyship would care for her morning meal.”

He gave a tired sigh. “I will have a servant bring it up.”

Wallace coughed into his hand. “My lord, I think it is best if you bring Her Ladyship her meal.”

He cocked his head. “Me?” Aside from his miserable company, the last thing or person his wife cared for was the morning meal.

The servant nodded. “You.”

Edmund looked to the tray and then to the door and then back to the old butler. The man was loyal and faithful and really the closest person he had to a friend in this world, but he was going mad in his advancing years if he suspected Phoebe wanted to share the same room with him. Then, Wallace hadn’t overheard the exchange involving bondage and mention of previous lovers. He cringed. Yes, in retrospect that really wasn’t a matter fit for a lady’s ears—on her wedding day. From her husband, no less.

Determined as he was faithful, Wallace reached for the tray. Edmund sighed and intercepted the man’s slow movements. “I have it,” he muttered. With the burden in his hands, he started for the door.

“And perhaps, if I might be so bold,” Wallace called after him, staying his movements. “A wedding gift, my lord, perhaps?”

A wedding gift. Of course, women adored baubles and trinkets and would expect glittering gemstones as some kind of token.
Then you should have wed one of those women, Edmund, for I am not one of those…
Wallace quietly took his leave.

Tray in hand, Phoebe’s words churned around his mind, Edmund scanned his gaze over the library. Practically a room unused during his parents’ living years, it was free of memories of his youth and for that he came here often for silence and the privacy of his thoughts. He shifted the burden in his hands and eyed the room. Edmund set down the tray; a tray of rapidly cooling food and eyed the floor-length walls of leather bound volumes. He started over to one shelf and perused the titles. A collection of blue leather tomes etched in gold lettering brought him to an immediate stop. Edmund pulled the book from the shelf and flipped it open to read the author’s note at the front. His heart started in a peculiar way. Over a blasted book. “You are driving me, mad, Phoebe Barrett,” he muttered. Nay, not Barrett. Deering. He snapped the book closed, and then with his meager offering set, it down upon the tray and resumed his march to her chambers.

With each footfall that brought him closer, the blasted uncertainty and indecision grew. He gritted his teeth. How much simpler his life had been when he didn’t feel or worry about anyone but his own pleasures. But now he cared and that could not be undone. Edmund drew to a stop beside his wife’s chamber doors, recalling back to another time he’d come to a halt outside the guest chambers. His father at his side, his strong, commanding hand on his smallish shoulder. He’d looked up at his sire, who’d stared at the wood panel, and hadn’t understood the vitriol, the loathing which burned from his eyes. Until he opened the door. And then Edmund had known. From then on, he had known all—about his parents and love and innocence and, more importantly, the ugliness of life. Violently thrusting aside those musings he’d kept buried for the better part of his life, he pressed the handle. Surprise shot through him when the handle easily turned.

He stepped inside and immediately located her. His body was attuned to her body’s nearness, as it had been from their exchange that moment beside her Captain Cook’s exhibit. She stood with her shoulder angled to him, pressed alongside the window with the curtain peeled back. For a moment he suspected she’d not heard his entry, but then she spoke in a tired tone that indicated she’d heard, and worse, didn’t care. “What do you want?”

He shifted on his feet, feeling like a boy who’d been caught nipping some gent’s purse of coin.
You. I want you. Only you.

At his silence, her narrow shoulders stiffened, but she still did not turn to face him. “I suspect you’ve come to consummate our marriage.”

One time, that would have been the most important, nay the only important, aspect of their relationship. He would rut himself to ecstasy between her sweet thighs. She would take him keening and crying with desire. They would have been sated. Now that was no longer enough. He wanted more of her than that quick coupling in Lord Essex’s garden. In ways he still did not fully understand, nor could piece together with his sullied spirit. No, despite her otherwise apt opinion, it was not what brought him here.

Edmund tried to form words, but for some reason he could not coordinate the blasted movement between his brain, his mouth, and his heart. His fingers tightened reflexively about the edge of the tray. “I am sorry.” The words burst from him, explosive and harsh.

At his gruff apology, Phoebe stiffened, but otherwise gave no indication that she cared. And why should she? The man he was, who’d never humbled himself after Margaret Dunn had made a fool of him on a field of honor, wanted to turn and run at being flayed open before Phoebe now.

He tried again, gentling his tone. “I am sorry.” The man he was now would not let him leave. Those words still emerged gravelly and hardened, but then that is who he’d been for the better part of his life. He could not change who he was in all the ways he wished he could, not even for Phoebe.

She wheeled slowly around to face him, but still she remained silent torturing him with the quiet. He slid his gaze to a point beyond her shoulder. “There have been women before you.” Lonely, miserable ladies as cynical and jaded as himself. Women trying to fill their own empty, meaningless lives. Edmund returned his gaze to her heart-shaped face. How had he once thought her plain? How had he not seen the fire of her spirit or the luxuriant auburn tresses that marked her as a very real Athena? “But I have not been with a woman since the moment I met you.” Initially, he’d been so preoccupied with his scheme involving Margaret Dunn’s niece and his quest for revenge. Now, he barely remembered there had been a woman named Margaret in his past. “And right now, all I know is I want you.”
Only you.
At his admission, Phoebe remained frozen, unblinking; those eyes that had once been a window into her soul and thoughts, this time blank. Her gaze alighted on the tray in his hands and then flew back to his face. Surprise lit her blue irises.

He hastily set down the burden, feeling exposed by her silent scrutiny. To give his hands something to do with purpose, he picked up the book and held it aloft. “I brought you a book. For our wedding.” He winced, as the words left his mouth at how ineffectual a gift this was. An old book taken from his already existing library.

She fluttered a hand about her breast and just touched the tips of her fingers to her chest.

“It is merely a book that was already a part of my collection,” he felt compelled to point out. There were enough lies that he, at the very least, owed her the truth of this book’s origins. Edmund studied the gold lettering a moment and then held it out to her. “I thought you might like it.”

They remained like that. He with his hand outstretched with the damned book in his hands, and she with her hand clasped to her chest. When she made no move to accept the offering, he forced his hand back to his side. He tossed the book down upon the tray where it landed with a thump. The silver clattered noisily, rattling the porcelain plate and silverware arranged by Cook. He dug deep and worked at hastily reconstructing the broken walls she’d shattered with her presence in his life. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said stiffly and made to go.

“Don’t!” she called out. He stopped and shot a backward glance at her.

Phoebe’s chest rose and fell with her slow, deliberate breaths. His gaze wandered lower and he proved himself the selfish bastard he’d always been, for he took in the exposed cream of her décolletage. A hungering to possess her slapped at him once more. When he forced his gaze away from the generous mounds of her flesh, he found her bold stare trained on him.

“Don’t leave.” She wet her lips and then said, “Stay.”

S
tay. What madness was this in asking him to stay? He, the unrelenting, unforgiving Marquess of Rutland had come with an apology and a gift? She eyed him suspiciously. “Is this another of your games, Edmund?”

He gave his head a brusque shake. “No game,” he said, the words a terse statement of fact.

Phoebe took several tentative steps toward this stranger she was now wed to; a man she’d loved in error and folly. She came to a stop beside him and the tray he’d brought and glanced down at his offering. Her heart turned over. Which was really quite odd, when her heart had been so thoroughly broken and shattered, destroyed beyond repair. And yet, in this instance, staring down at John Britton’s
Beauties of England and Wales
, her heart felt very much alive. With hesitant fingers, she scooped up the book and ran them over the gilt lettering.

“It is about England and Wales.” His gruff statement filled the silence.

She lifted her eyes from the small volume. “I see that,” she murmured.

“You’d spoken of traveling to Wales and—” He dragged a hand through his dark, unfashionably long locks. There was a faint tremble there hinting at his unease; this stoic, unflappable man became, just then, very human. “It is not new,” he rambled on. “As you can see. It should have been new,” he said under his breath. “At the very least it—”

“It doesn’t have to be new and shiny and perfect to be a worthy gift, Edmund,” she said, pulling his offering close to her chest. He still did not understand. “It is not the outer piece that matters, but rather what is underneath. That is what matters.”

A flush stained his cheeks as he clearly interpreted the words she meant for him to hear. Then he tugged at his lapels. “Yes, well—I will leave you to attend your meal and your reading, my lady.”
My lady
? She cocked her head while he backed away from her as though she were a viper poised to strike Then, on the heel of that was his earlier talk of women and their ties and ropes, and an ugly niggling played at the edges of her mind. “Are you going to one of your ladies?” She should be glad if he did and yet unwelcome jealousy twisted at her insides. Phoebe folded her arms close and tried to dull the pain of his inevitable betrayal. To no avail.

Her words brought him to a slow halt. Edmund lowered his eyebrows and with slow, languid steps closed the distance he’d placed between them. “Would you like that?” There was a clipped harshness to his question that hinted at the truth—her words mattered to him in some way.

Phoebe wanted to strike out at him. A flippant response formed, but then stuck in her throat. For all the lies and deception between them, it would break her in ways her mother had never been broken the day Edmund took a lover. Not for the shame that would come with that, but for what that said of the end of a dream she’d once had for them. She gave her head a jerky shake. “No. I would not like that.”

With his open palm, he caressed her cheek. “You still do not know,” he whispered.

She leaned into his touch, hating herself for her weakness, and hating him more for this hold he had upon her. “Kn-know what?”

Edmund leaned down, so their lips were a hairsbreadth apart. The faintest trace of coffee and mint clung to him and she inhaled deeply of that sweet and potent scent and allowed it to fill her senses. He brushed his lips faintly over hers and she wanted to cry out at the fleetingness of that exchange as he drew back. He folded his large hand over the nape of her neck and angled her head. “I only want you,” he said, his tone harsh, as though angry with himself and her for that admission.

Her heart flipped unto itself and then he claimed her mouth under his in a hard, punishing kiss. Passion exploded between them as he slanted his lips over hers again and again. She moaned and with that slight parting of her lips, he thrust his tongue deep into her mouth. Her legs weakened, but he easily caught her to the hard wall of his chest, anchoring her against him, preventing her from dissolving into a puddle of nothing but hot sensation at his feet. He stroked her tongue with his and she met that determined movement, returning his kiss. There would be time enough for regrets later for surrendering to this—to him. For now, there were only this moment and them.

Edmund swept her up and with long, quick strides carried her to the bed. As he laid her down, he broke contact with her lips, and she cried out, aching for his kiss. His thick, smoky black lashes swept low, but not before she saw the hot flare of desire in his chocolate brown eyes—desire for her. For everything that had come to pass between them, she exulted in this small sliver of power she had over him. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it to the floor where it landed with a noisy thump. Next came his snow white cravat. Phoebe propped herself up on her elbows. She should look away. Any polite, proper, and decent young lady would avert her gaze from the sight of man disrobing before her.